Speak in a job interview physically, not just verbally

Okay, we know everyone adores you anyways, but even you Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolie’s can’t get everything you want on looks alone. Sure, some of that physical attraction counts, but what counts even more is your subliminal body language. Even if people don’t realize it, this is the thing that creates the vibes people love.

Here are 5 ways to get people hooked on you in one sitting.

1. Maintain Good Eye Contact

Eye Contact is huge. Imagine talking to someone who never looked at you, not even once. Rather, they scanned the room with their eyes: the walls, the floor, the ceiling—anything but you. Would you feel like they were listening? Even an unusually long look in the other direction would throw the whole conversation off.

Good eye contact establishes rapport. The listener should be giving more eye contact than the person speaking, as if receiving the information not simply by listening but through sight as well, which is sort of what is going on with all the body language involved.

Be careful, though, being too intense can have the opposite effect. Try to maintain good contact throughout about 70% of the conversation. Gentleman, the ladies are a lot better about making eye contact when listening, so if you’re having issues watch the way they do it. Many have it down to an art.

2. Posture: Not the Time to Practice Your Gangster Lean

A confident, able individual has good posture, and a slouch creates the impression that you are unorganized, unambitious, and undisciplined. Good posture says a lot about someone, so this is something you should work on long before you walk into an interview. Use posture exercises to learn how to master this skill.

Also, a good listener leans towards the speaker, as if trying to get closer. This is a temporary submissive gesture to ease the exchange of ideas. Don’t get so far up in their grill that they can diagnose your halitosis; just lean forward a bit as if making a conscious effort to hear their words.

When its your turn to speak, remain in a more neutral position. Don’t lean back as if you own the place or you might seem unnecessarily arrogant. Sit up straight and save the leaning for when you’re listening.

How job seekers can overcome phone interviews easily

Phone interviews are becoming a common way for employers to screen potential employees during the hiring process. Unlike traditional, in-person job interviews, phone interviews are usually fairly short, require less preparation, and can even be outsourced by the employer if necessary. These features make phone interviewing an effective way to narrow down the list of candidates before scheduling in-person interviews. Unfortunately, many people are not comfortable conducting a conversation of that importance over the phone. If the prospect of a phone interview makes you nervous, these tips can help turn an awkward interview into a confidence-inspiring success.

Preparation is the Name of the Game

When preparing for a phone interview, don’t forget that not all recruiters and employers schedule them ahead of time. At any moment, a recruiter could stumble across your resume or an employer could decide to call you in regards to a recent application. Your chances for success in your job search will be greatly improved if you try to always expect the unexpected (especially during a job interview).

Keep Your Resume Near the Phone

Knowing that you could get a call from a recruiter or an employer at any moment, you should always keep a recent copy of your resume near the phone. That way, whether or not your phone interview is anticipated, you will have all the information you need right at your fingertips. Of course for a job interview, your resume is not the only resource you should keep handy.

Create a log for keeping track of the resumes you send out, recording each company, position title, contact name, date the position was applied for, and qualifications for the job. If you have a chance to research the company, make a file with that information, and keep it near the phone as well. Finally, you should always have access to a notepad and pen during a phone interview, so that you can write down the interviewer’s name, key questions he or she asked, and your responses.

Practice (and a Cheat Sheet) Makes Perfect

Just like with a traditional job interview, you should try to anticipate questions the interviewer might ask. If you have come up with examples and practiced your answers ahead of time, you will sound much more intelligent and confident in the interview. Moreover, since the interviewer cannot see you, there is nothing to stop you from referring to a “cheat sheet” – notes to help you remember your practiced answers, so that you never sound like you have been taken off guard.

When you practice your answers and put together your cheat sheet, you should think about job interview questions that are traditionally asked, such as:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Where do you see yourself in 1/5/10 years?
• What is your leadership style? Please give an example of a real situation.

Job networking's common pitfalls

This guest post was written by David Couper. You can find the original source article on selfgrowth.comTweet

1. Not doing your research.

- Make sure you know who will help you and why. Understand your business and how it works. Research which are the companies that you want to work with and which are the ones that you don't. If you don’t you run the risk of blowing the job.
- I called someone without researching their company only to find that they didn't work in Europe like I thought they did. So my pitch about my European background was wasted.

2. Networking with the wrong people.

- A Career Fair may be a great place for some people looking for a job but not always. A lawyer I know wasted an afternoon meeting with fast-food providers looking for entry-level staff. She didn't want to learn to flip!
- If you are an actor the best place to get a job is hanging out with other actors but with buyers - producers and directors. Hang out for support but not for opportunities.
- Watch out for scams, opportunists and ne-er-do-wells. Don't pay for a networking opportunity unless you have checked it out and got some good feedback. Be smart!

3. Not being clear why you are there.

- Do you want information?
- Do you want names?
- Do you want job leads?
- Do you want to get free food?
Make sure you have a purpose and stick to it.

Get your resume to their inbox

If you’re looking for work and creating a resume, you should not only carefully review the resume, but also consider some tactics to make sure your emailed resume isn’t getting lost in employers’ spam email filters.

If you’re on the hiring side of the desk, check for the same problem, which may be be preventing you from seeing the resumes of highly qualified candidates.

When this post was originally written in October 2004, the Wall Street Journal had just reported on this problem of the growing use of spam filtering technology and its potential interference with emailed resumes (excerpted here).

Spam-filtering technology has improved since then, while spammers have changed methods, so we’ve expanded, updated, and republished this post to help today’s jobseekers with the following resume tips.

1. When Creating a Resume, Avoid Problematic, “Spammy” Words.

According to this WSJ article, some good resumes are filtered out as spam due to the use of specific “bad” words common in spam:

The mere presence of words such as “free,” “expand,” “trial,” “mortgage,” or exclamation points or colored backgrounds — all of which might be used by resume writers as well as spammers — could trigger some filters.

The WSJ told the story of an applicant who had received his MBA degree magna cum laude. Who wouldn’t want to list that honor in their resume?
However, spam filters have a little problem with the word “cum,” because of its less honorable meaning, as this applicant learned when a company informed him that his resume had been deleted from its system because it contained an “obscenity.”

He fixed the problem: His resume now says he graduated with “high honors.”

Similarly, while creating a resume to be emailed, think about the words you use and whether you commonly see them in the spam you receive. Those “spammy” words may relate to:

◦ Dollar amounts. It may be important to include on your resume how much your average sales were, how much you increased revenues, etc., but beware: dollar amounts are common to spam, either in prices or as part of the sales pitch (such as “make over $10,000 a month with Google”).

Job boards and job search engines you may have missed

There are tons of job sites out there, but often during your job search on them you fill find few within a very particular job field or industry. If you want to get a job in a niche industry, it's even harder. So take a look at the Top 100 Niche Job Sites list here so you can spend more time on effective job boards and land the job you want today.

Job interview tips you can't miss

Preparing for an interview can be a nerve wracking experience. Fortunately, there are some ways to prep for it which will let you ace the interview. While these may seem like strange pre-interview routines, they actually do work and will help you to land the job of your dreams:

1. Look at Facebook

This is actually two strategies in one. First of all, check your Facebook profile out and make sure that your own profile is set to private and there are no embarrassing photos of you tagged on the site. If there are, untag yourself from those photos and ask your friends if they would please refrain from tagging you. If possible, get the photos taken down. Double check as well that status updates you’ve posted aren’t embarrassing. If they are, delete them.

While this won’t completely remove the record of those photos, it does make it harder to find. That in turn means if you ace the interview, your interviewer is less likely to find embarrassing material online which will make them think twice about calling you back for a second interview.

The second half of this technique is to find out the name of the person who will be interviewing you and look up their Facebook profile. Get as much information as you can about the person since this will be helpful to you to throw into the conversation when you are meeting with them. Showing an interest in something the person is interested in is a sure way to get yourself remembered out of the hundreds of interviews the hiring manager has to conduct.

2. Prepare a Folder to Fiddle With

Yeah, it sounds strange, but this is a great pre-interview technique that can come in handy. Often, you will be asked to wait for a few minutes before your interview. Most times, it’s just because the person interviewing you is busy or wants to make you feel as if you aren’t the most important person for them to meet. However, on occasion, this is actually a test. They will secretly observe you to see what you do when you are waiting to be interviewed. If you have a folder with your papers in it, you can spend the time appearing to organize yourself so you ace that test.

Make your resume flawless

Here are 10 of the most overused, uber-cliché words you could ever use on a resume, cover letter or job application. Here’s why:

1) Ambitious: “If it were so, it was a grievous fault; and grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.” Ambition may be a wonderful thing for your career, but no one wants to hire someone who’s going to try to replace them or leave as soon as he gets a bit of training at the company’s expense.

2) Competent: If that’s the best you can say about your work performance maybe you ought to consider a new line of work, perhaps the Post Office. When the chips are down we want people who are awesome. Don’t tell us you’re competent, show us you’re amazing.

3) Creative: The last thing we need is more creative accountants. You’re trying to demonstrate business value. Creativity is neither measurable nor reliable. It can sometimes be turned into profit. In that case tell us how you did it and how much it was worth. Let us determine for ourselves how creative you are.

4) Efficient: So was Jack the Ripper. What we really want to know is how you’re efficiency is going to make us money.

5) Flexible: What are you, a contortionist? If by this you mean that you’re able to take on a number of different tasks then show us a range of what you can do. Better yet, show us the range of results you can get. If you mean that you can put your foot behind your head then show us that too, you’ll definitely get remembered.

6) Hard-working: We could say the same of a prisoner on a chain-gang. What an employer is looking for is results. If you achieve them by hard work or occasional bursts of brilliance doesn’t matter a whole lot. Merely working hard isn’t enough. For all we know you tend to do it at cross-purposes.